There is nothing more frustrating than to have lots of time to do things, a million projects you want to do, and no energy to do them. This is a short list of some of the projects I fully intended to do while I was recovering from my surgery:

paint my bathroom window

paint my kitchen cabinets

sew a dress to wear to my sister’s wedding

blog a lot

plant a wildflower garden on the side of my house

make two new skirts for work

get a good start on my major Christmas project: stockings for all the new family members we’ve acquired over the last few years

buy a car

Can we say overambitious? None of this happened. Well, technically, I did buy a car while I was out, but since it was the kind of car you buy off a friend for $50 just to help you get around until you get well enough to buy a real car, I think it doesn’t count.

I also started experimenting with different hair styles. This is something I almost never do. I don’t have time in the mornings to play around with things, so I fall back on the same three or four styles I know I can reliably do in five minutes or less. However, I think this one is going to get added to the rotation. It’s like a crown braid, except it’s twisted up instead of braiding. It turned out so ridiculously Gibson Girl that I had to take a picture. I was trying to find the pin that I got the idea from, but maybe I didn’t pin it?

I spent an insane amount of time on Pinterest. Turns out that when you’re too tired to actually do anything, but not tired enough to sleep, Pinterest fills the void. A couple of people commented on my sudden flood of pins, so I do apologize if I suddenly took over your Pinterest feed. But a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.

I got to spend a lot of time with my nieces, especially the Little Philosopher. It seemed like 007 and The Duchess popped in most days, in between working on their new house or doing other errands around town. It was so much fun getting to know my niece a little better. I’ve gotten her even more hooked on Pinterest, which has proven unexpectedly handy in finding out what she really likes. I would never have known that really big buttons were so mind-blowingly awesome to the the under three set. But here is proof – Sweet Pea and Bug enthusiastically playing with the big buttons I got for them (you can just barely glimpse a few of them clutched in Sweet Pea’s fist) on the floor of the chapel during AnniPott’s wedding rehearsal.

Speaking of which, my sister got married, and I took about three pictures, all of various family members processing into church. This is flower girl Sweet Pea, AnniPotts god-daughter, being escorted in by her mother Sae. None of my pictures, alas, were of the bride. I know. My only excuse is that it was a really long day for me, with way more standing than I had done since before my surgery, extremely bumpy roads to get to the reception, which led to staying in one place as much as possible at the reception, and carefully counting the hours until I could safely take another pain pill. Indy has a few up on her blog, though, so if you want to see more, check her out.

So it turns out that pain killers lower my impulse control. Also, online shopping on my phone is way too easy. Especially when my favorite fabric website is having a super sale. Which is how I ended up being the proud owner of three yards of incredibly luscious black 100% silk satin. You know, the incredibly rich, drapey stuff that just kinda oozes and shines in old paintings. It is one of the softest things I have ever touched. I’m still a little in awe at the sale price I got. I could make the most amazing dress out of it. But where would I ever wear it?

Every day at precisely noon, my phone begins to vibrate, play Comfort Ye My People from the Messiah, and display across the screen, in large, friendly letters, “Sext.” If I could remember what model of phone I have long enough to google how to take a screen shot, I would totally show you. Anyway, this is not my noon reminder to send smutty messages to… someone. It is my regular reminder that it is time for the Midday Prayer part of the Liturgy of the Hours. If I am at work, it also means I can go shut the door and not have to talk to anyone for an hour.

The reason why Midday Prayer is called Sext is because back in the day when they were naming things, the noon prayers were at the Sixth Hour, and Sext is Latin for Sixth. I’m the obstinate type who figures that just because some upstarts invented another word that happens to sound and be spelled just like the word we’ve been using for a couple of millenia, but happens to mean something very different, is no reason why I should change the words I use. Plus, it amuses me greatly. I have no idea what my coworkers who happen to be near me at noon think, but that makes me giggle too. So I’m keeping it.

My alarm that lets me know that it’s time to take my painkillers is also from the Messiah: Behold, I Tell You A Mystery. The text is 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Because if that doesn’t describe what painkillers do, I don’t know what does. I’m thinking about changing it to Balm In Gilead, except an alarm needs to be loud, startling, or annoying enough to make you take action, and I think that’s maybe too soothing. We’ll see.

Part of the problem of being off work is that I have the illusion of endless time to spare, and since I’m on painkillers, no sense of my own limitations. For example, Sae has been trying to find a dress for Sweet Pea to wear for her flower girl gig at AnniePott’s upcoming wedding. It doesn’t have to be a super fancy dress, but it does have to conform to Indy’s carefully curated palette of greens. Last Saturday Sae brought her latest attempt to Indy for approval, but alas, it was more turquoise than emerald, and did not pass muster.

Sae was sounding a bit discouraged, and suddenly I found myself volunteering that if Sae would buy a couple of yards of eyelet cloth, I’d be happy to dye it the right shade with Rit Dye, and then sew the dress myself. This seemed like an entirely reasonable proposition to me. After all, kids that size are basically cylinders, so a pretty party dress would be basically four rectangles sewn together, and two of those would be straps. Plus I could put a little pocket on the front, and it would be ridiculously cute. I thought a lot about that pocket.

Then I thought that it would also be a really great idea to get a couple more yards of cloth and sew a matching dress out of it for The Little Philosopher too. This also seemed entirely reasonable. I even talked about it with The Duchess. I decided that the pockets should be little gathered pockets like this, all edged with tiny white lace. I never once thought about the five other projects I also need to get done before the wedding, which is in three weeks.

However, God loves me. Sae found a dress that will probably work, and it looks like that particular domino chain of crazy is not going to tumble down after all.

Yesterday my niece the Little Philosopher came over to be babysat by people who are not me. She is beginning to get in touch with her inner chatterbox, and we had a very good time with each other. I was getting more and more tired, so after a while I was mostly lying on the couch while she climbed over me like a jungle gym (miraculously not kneeing me in my incision, though it came close a couple times!). She eventually perched herself on the arm of the couch, right behind my shoulder, and I introduced her to Pinterest. These were her two favorite Pins:

Right. So as you may have noticed, blogging has been a bit… sparse around here lately. This is partly because I haven’t figured out how to talk about my health right now, and partly because of the way the medication I’m on is affecting me. And then there’s the traditional, oh Lord I’m so behind better blog about ALL the things which is way too overwhelming, so then I don’t blog at all. But I figure a little blogging is better than nothing. At the very least you’ll all know that I’m still alive and kicking, even if I’m not writing much about it at present. So here is a quick roundup with pictures of some of what’s been going on.

First of all, I believe I mentioned a while ago that we have another baby in the family. I still don’t have a nickname for him. So far I haven’t had much face time with him. He’s got an awful lot of competition for aunt-ly attention, and his competitors have had a lot more practice. But he’s awfully cute, and tiny, and sweet. Speaking of his competition, however…

Indy organized an Epic Easter Egg Decorating party with all the nieces currently in town. The older girls did most of the decorating, but even the toddlers got into the act. We swaddled them in t-shirts to protect their clothes, which made them even cuter, if such a thing is possible. Sweet Pea enjoyed herself enormously. She dunked eggs in dye until she got bored, and started using some of the egg shells as scoops to mix the dye colors. When she was banished from the dye cups, she came out to the dining room where she climbed up on my lap and helped me make cardboard egg displays. And I don’t mean the usual toddler “I’m helping!” kind of helping that ends up in the usual preschool art project. No, she really helped. I was in charge of wielding the glue bottle while she applied paper flowers with great elan. She also gave her very decided opinions on silver mini rickrack (no), and silver beads versus tiny buttons for flower centers (buttons won).

We also had The Little Philosopher. Don’t let her sweetly woebegone expression fool you. That’s her default “I’m thinking deeply about world domination and in the meantime don’t you want to give me cookies?” look. I’m pretty sure she has a brilliant career in Mad Science ahead of her. If you could see the way her eyebrows crinkle up in slightly maniacal glee when she’s happy, I know that you would agree. I’ve been teaching her to say, “For science!” just so that she’s prepared. You can’t have too much of an edge when you’re going up against your fellow mad scientists. Someday I’ll get a picture of that grin to show you, and then you’ll understand.

Besides preparing for Easter (and of course as usual I have a highly ambitious crafting project that may or may not get finished and/or photographed to share), I’ve been working a lot on my house. It seems that one of my standard reactions to stress is nesting. I’ve been working on all the finishing details on my bedroom that got painted right before my surgery in December. I made a lamp to hang over the bed (my first ever electrical project), and I’ve been getting things up on the walls. I knew that I wanted a gallery over my fireplace, but my design process tends to be rather evolutionary. This is one iteration. The blue birds on the mantle are heirlooms from my grandmother, and the wooden cross next to the alarm clock is one I got at a monastery in South Dakota when I was on NET. Someday the branch is going to be a floral candelabra/chandelier thing, sort of like this one, except perhaps with birds instead of candles, and maybe a small steampunk airship or two. However, one of my favorite things so far about my arrangement is this:

I just love it. I got the little icon of the Risen Christ from the retreat house where we went on vacation last summer. I had saved the picture of myself with baby Sweet Pea for a long time, and finally framed it up. I had both of them on the mantle while I decided where to hang them, and then I noticed how the lighting of both of them work together. It made me laugh, and it made me think of several happily sappy things, so I had to hang them like that.

Besides getting ready for Easter, and working on the house, we’ve also been starting to get ready for AnniPott’s wedding this summer. Indy has been working hard on the most gorgeous invitations ever (which is quite a thing considering her usual standards), and a little while back we had a Wedding Craft Night to start work on some of the reception decorations. Indy and AnniPotts have worked out a decorating scheme featuring lots and lots of different kinds of garlands, including the mini pennants Dad is showing off here. There are leaf garlands, and flower garlands, and I don’t know what all. It’s going to be very, very beautiful!

I have also been working on a Super Secret Wedding Present for AnniPotts and Cuthbert. I can’t show you pictures just yet because AnniPotts reads this blog, and some of it is a surprise. But it’s beautiful! I’ve been so excited about how it’s turning out that I think I’ve shown it to just about every woman friend I’ve seen over the last month.

However, my other sewing project for the wedding, the one that I can show you, is making myself a dress to wear. You see, a while ago AnniPotts told me that she was going to have Mexican Sugar Skulls for her wedding cake toppers (Indy is going to make them for her, so you know they’re going to be gorgeous). She fell in love with that style of Mexican folk art when she was in San Antonio, and although she’s not using it throughout her wedding decorations, she wanted to have a little of it at least. It really fits with her personality, and whimsical sense of humor. I also have a whimsical sense of humor, and when I came across the fabric you see above (Calaveras from the Alexander Henry Folklorico line), I knew I had to make myself a Dolly Clackett dress out of it for the wedding. I mean, it’s just so awesome: the turquoise background, the gold glitter (hard to see in the photo, I know), the flowered skulls. How could I not?

I tried to resist. After all, there is no way I actually need either more fabric, or one more project on my plate right now. But it was in vain. When I found myself repeatedly musing over my collection of repro vintage patterns looking for just the right one that I gave in. Sometimes you just have to accept your fate. Luckily, I used some of the few shreds of sanity left to pick one of the simplest patterns in my collection (seriously, I think this thing has four pieces, and that includes the optional bow). I can totally have that done by June. Totally. No problem.

Sigh. I am insane. But I will have an awesome dress. So I have decided that I don’t care. My only regret is that I didn’t have the idea to make it in time to join the Dolly Clackett Sewalong. But you can’t have everything.

Which brings me to the topic I’ve been avoiding: my health. When people ask me how I’m doing, I say that I’m hanging in there. I don’t really know what else to say. I had my first shot of the super scarey chemo meds about a month ago, and I’m due to get my second on Monday. So far the side effects have not been quite as bad as I’d been afraid they would be. That sounds all nice and positive, until you consider that I had been truly terrified, due to a severe case of over-googling. So in this case “not as bad as I thought it would be” means that the side effects are merely pretty unpleasant instead of completely horrific.

To be honest, I don’t know how to talk about this. When most people ask how I’m doing, they really aren’t interested in hearing the whole laundry list of uncomfortable things I’m experiencing. I don’t want to turn into that one person who does nothing but complain about her health all day. It doesn’t help that when I do go into a little more detail, I can’t get more than a couple items down the list before I start to feel like I’m whining, and I have to stop. Plus, choosing to think positively has been one of the things that has really helped me get through this. Going into detail about exactly how much I’m not feeling well does not help me have an optimistic outlook. On the other hand, while “it could be worse” is an almost universally true statement, it’s not really the whole truth about what I’m going through.

I have one sweet friend who keeps eagerly asking me whether my medicine has started working yet to make me feel better. Each time I have to gently break it to her that this is not the kind of medicine that makes you feel better, at least not in the short term. There’s another friend who keeps complimenting me on the improved color in my face, telling me I must be feeling so much better! I don’t know how to tell her that, while I am taking my iron supplements faithfully, the color in my cheeks is much more likely to be from the persistent low grade fevers. Another friend gets all outraged on my behalf, and tries to insist that I call my doctor and make him do something. I try to explain that everything I’m experiencing is well within the expected reactions, and that unless things become much worse, there is nothing that can be done except let the treatment run its course. But it doesn’t seem to get through.

So this is how I’m doing: I’m hanging in there. I’m not feeling well, and if you are really, genuinely interested in getting the whole laundry list of ways that I’m not feeling well, message me privately and I’ll tell you. I’m dreading getting my second shot, because I’m pretty sure it’s going to make me feel even more not well. But at the same time, I’ve managed to make it so far, and I’m still hanging in there. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed, and doing my best to trust God that, since he’s carried me so far, he’ll keep carrying me the rest of the way. One day I really am going to be on the other side of this. I just have to keep hanging on until I’m there.

So I’ve always figured that becoming an Aunt carries with it certain rights and responsibilities. There’s several rules and regulations surrounding presents (thou shalt give them, and forever cherish any you receive in return, at least until the child who gave it is over the age of 18), and some regarding babysitting. There’s also the sacred right to pump the child full of sugar/caffeine and then send him or her home to the parents. That one carries a corollary that should the aunt acquire children of her own, the parents have the right to reciprocate in kind (this also applies to any noise or mess-making presents), so the wise Aunt only indulges in it judiciously.

However, one of the Aunt responsibilities I cherish most is teaching my siblings’ progeny important life skills (see also: teaching Sweet Pea to say Crivens!). For example, when I discovered that Sweet Pea loves black olives, I immediately saw that it was deeply necessary that she should learn to eat black olives off of her fingers while her fingers were still small enough to fit into the holes. This past Sunday I happened to have a spare can of black olives left over from making the salad Indy requested for her birthday brunch. So once the salad was assembled, I poured the rest of the olives into a small bowl, and went out to do my duty.

It turns out that it’s pretty easy skill to teach. Pretty much I just popped olives onto Sweet Pea’s fingers and let nature take its course. She was initially a little confused, but she caught on pretty fast.

And then she was hooked. She loved it. She couldn’t get enough, eating about equal amounts off her fingers and straight from the bowl. When I finally took the bowl of black olives away from her right before lunch, she cried, “Where my olives go!” It was kinda awesome. But it got better. When The Little Philosopher saw Sweet Pea eating olives, she decided she needed to get in on the action too. So I stuck some olives on her fingers too.

She had to consider it a little, but pretty soon she was munching black olives down too. The whole having an olive on her finger tip seemed rather fascinating. She didn’t really want to eat as many olives (after a while she opened her mouth and gave me back a mouthful of chewed up olive bits that she hadn’t bothered to swallow). But even then she wanted me to put more on her fingers. So I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I’ve also been working on other Aunt-ly duties, specifically those regarding presents. Fleur had a birthday recently, and finally received her much-longed-for American Girl doll. She has been wanting this for quite a while, and had been disappointed a couple of times, so this was a Very Big Deal. This was also a big deal for her aunts, since several of us had been busily bookmarking American Girl crafting projects that we’d had to put on hold. As soon as I heard for sure that Fleur’s doll had really, truly arrived, I quick printed out a couple of patterns and started work on some very small pajamas and a couple pairs of underwear. I had a t-shirt and a pair of undies done to give Fleur on Sunday, but unfortunately I ran out of time to take pictures. However, I’ve got two pairs of pajama pants cut out, plus another t-shirt and pair of undies, so hopefully I can make that up. So there’s lots of very cute small clothes in my, and Fleur, and your future. Just thought I’d let you know.

Also, stay tuned, and I’ll have an update on my medical situation coming later this week.

This is something I need to remember: Sometimes when it feels like the sky is falling, the real problem is that I forgot to eat a meal, and my blood sugar is low. Instead of going to cry in a corner, it would be a better idea to go eat a sandwich.

Also, when I get low, I have pictures of ridiculously cute nieces and nephews to fall back on.

Witness Pigeon, Honey, and Sweet Pea sharing a moment.

And this one, the blurriness suggesting the average speed at which the Little Philosopher moves.

And then there’s this little guy, who I guess technically is my first cousin once removed (I had to google it). He’s AJ’s first born son, Aunt M and Uncle G’s first grandchild, here being much more interested in an empty bucket than in his grandfather.

All of these were taken at the big family get-together we had on Sunday. AJ and her parents had traveled up from DC to spend a little time with us while Big Brother and his family were in town, and another group of cousins and first cousins came up from Cincinnati to spend the afternoon too. None of us has a house quite big enough for a group that large, so we headed out to the parish where Mr. T works, and took over their parish hall for the afternoon.

During lunch, I noticed that Fleur was being unusually quiet, and I found out that she wasn’t feeling well. So we got her settled in a comfy chair with a cup of peppermint tea, and a small sewing project. For a while, AP came and kept her company.

The project Fleur was working on was a Tiny Kitty stuffie, after the pattern/tutorial by Abby Glassenberg of While She Naps. I had brought felt and stuffing along to work on a small project I’d started with Honey, but then it came in handy as something quiet for Fleur to do. After a while, I noticed that the other couch in the corner had filled up with various sized girls, daughters of my Cincinnati cousins. They looked fabulously bored, too old to run around the hall and squeal with the toddlers, too young to enjoy sitting around and talking with the grown-ups. So I asked them if they would like to make a kitten too. They would, and before I knew it, I was tutoring four little girls through the intricacy of running stitch and whip stitch, how to keep your needle threaded, and exactly how much stuffing is enough.

It was really fun, and the girls seemed to enjoy themselves a lot. One of the girls told me that she had never actually been able to sew before. She said that when her grandma gave her sewing lessons, it was mostly her watching her grandmother do things, that she never got to take more than a stitch herself. She has a little sewing kit, with directions for how to make Barbie clothes, but she could never figure out how the needle and thread thing worked, so she’d been gluing the pieces of cloth together. She was so thrilled with her kitten that first she came up with a Song of Kitten Joy, and then an interpretive dance to be performed while singing said song. It was pretty awesome.

The funny thing is, I spent the whole time hanging out with the little girls, and barely talked to my adult relatives at all. I feel a little regretful about that (I have some very cool relatives). But I think it maybe was a good thing for me. I am getting rather worn out, physically and emotionally. An afternoon on the couch, busy enough that I didn’t have time to think about the things that are stressing me out, was perhaps just what I needed. And that’s good.

Sarah Whittle, coral stitch: You can use different thread thicknesses or change the angle of the knot to give different effects. Coral stitch can be used on straight or curved lines as well as being used as a textured filling stitch. When using as a filling stitch place the knots into spaces between the knots of the previous row .